Terminator (film franchise)

I guess I did.

Wonder what action franchise is getting an anime next.

Expendables would be perfect for an anime adaptation honestly.

Anyone find it funny that James Cameron has a more sympathetic interpretation of SKYNET and its actions (see here)? Because in pretty much all media SKYNET is portrayed with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and even when Cameron was at the head in Dark Fate he doesn't do a damn thing to correct that. I mean it wouldn't be too hard considering in T2 we get what could be considered a Freudian Excuse (humanity tried to turn it off when they realized it was truly sentient and thus giving it a reason to hate and fear them), but nope. And in some works like T3 it doesn't even have that going for it

Might be of interest with news of an anime adaptation, Nightfall Games is just started kickstarting funds for The Terminator RPG

The funky part of how Skynet is handled is that each of the movies generally had a cut subplot intending to show some depth (Salvation had a cut plot about it basically making a new race of humanity out of people it deemed worthy. The Helena Bonham Carter version wasn't actually originally intended to be Skynet but instead the actual character she played speaking for Skynet, with Skynet itself continuing to be entirely silent) and Genesys was probably going to play around with Skynet's motivations if it had continued.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 13th 2021 at 4:28:35 AM

The Sarah Connor Chronicles explored this as well. It's a given that Skynet will arise, but it's up for grabs what the Skynet that rises will be like.

But dang that cut Salvation plotline really interests me. I would have loved to see that become a mainstay of the mythology.

I'm glad to hear about the anime. I've long since come to the conclusion that the only thing that can break this franchise out of its tired tropes is a move to a different medium. I would have loved a return to television but I wouldn't know how you do that without rebooting the whole thing yet again.

Can we please not make this guy anymore relevant? He’s not a critic; he’s a clown.

And a horrible boss.

I mean, we’ll be here for a day to list all that.

Salvation is kind of one of the more interesting attempts at continuing the series. There's a lot of legit interesting stuff attached to that iteration, but the casting and acting was kind of bleh. Sam Worthington is not a great lead, no matter how much Hollywood was trying to force him down our throats at the time.

Much like that surprisingly good Terminator FPS from a year or so back, I feel like Salvation would have been better as a game or a series. Really milk the world for all it’s worth.

We did get Sarah Connor Chronicles at least.

@ H Barnill: Remember when TV Tropes were big fans of the Nostalgia Critic? and TGWTG?

-punches you through a wall-

Nope,totally forget

I’ve looked up to a lot of people in my life: Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby, CNN.

Look at how they betrayed us. And to think we gave Bale crap just for yelling at someone.

Those were more innocent times

Looking back at Terminator 2, I have been wondering what Future John Connor thought would happen with his past self and "Uncle Bob". Assuming this wasn't another Stable Time Loop and he was changing his own history, did he consider the different path Past John would go by? Did he think he would change history so drastically, or even imagine the T-800 he sent back would be like a father to him?

Idk how I fell down the Terminator rabbit hole, but I did, so here I am. I've been thinking. In T2 they were really pushing the "who's the hero? Who's the villain?" angle, to the point that they even kind of hid the fact that Robert Patrick's character even was a Terminator, right? What if they'd done it the other way around, so the T-800 was the killer, and it was the T-1000 that was there to protect John? They even could've faked us all out by making it clear from the beginning that it was a Terminator, and if anything it was even deadlier and more ruthless than the last one! Of course Arniebot's the good guy, we would've said, right up until it attacked John and the T-1000 stepped in to save him.

It would have been a very different movie, yes, but I think it would've been a very cool and interesting one. Since apparently you can't reprogram a T-1000, they could've explored first of all a self-aware Terminator. And why it chose to go back in time to protect the man that would ultimately help the humans defeat Skynet. The dynamic between it and John would've been very different, since it already knows how to act like a person, and the whole "programed to obey orders from John Connor" thing wouldn't happen. It might refrain from killing people (as well as toning down the cold, ruthless attitude), but only because it realizes behaving in ways that make John view it with fear and distrust makes it harder to protect him...at first, anyway. It might come to genuinely care for John.

Plus, we could probably avoid the whole 'self-sacrifice that's rendered completely pointless in the very next movie' thing.

At the time of release, the film would not have been able to subvert audience expectations in this way. No one would have thought "Of course Arniebot's the good guy," because the first film taught us that the robot that looks like Arnie is evil, and "the other guy" is part of the resistance fighting him. If in 2022 you were expecting the twist, it's because three decades of storytelling have built off it's success.

That'd have been a nifty trick to pull in T3.

I do think there was a certain detriment to the franchise by trying to one-up T2 when it came to Terminator model upgrades, particularly T3 and Genisys. A point in Dark Fate's favor was thinking a bit more laterally in terms of function rather than glitzier tech. Apparently the original idea for T2 was for two T-800 terminators fighting each other before the liquid metal effect was deemed workable.

To that end, maybe we're better off T3 didn't try to one-up the bait-and-switch part too, and send the franchise down a path of increasingly contrived twists.

Anime announced for Netflix

Oooooo

Everything anime now

Even though anime isn't my medium, I think this is a good thing for the franchise which has been needing to expand outside of the medium of films ever since Terminator 3 proved that terminator films are at heavy risk of being formulaic.

(I loved the Sarah Conner Chronicles of course)